UK domain name manager Nominet has requested .wales and .cymru. Meanwhile, three companies have asked for .Yoga.

Figures released by Icann showed that 1,930 companies and organisations have applied for domains based on their title or business area.

The new system can use any word in place of the usual .com or .co.uk suffix and applications have already been received for .insurance, .music, .miami and .online.

Icann set a fee of $185,000 (£118,800) for organisations to take part in the application process and a minimum annual renewal fee of $25,000 will be charged in order to maintain ownership of the suffix.

Icann will deal with the requests in lots of 500 and the first domains are expected to go live between April and June 2013.

Of the 1,930 applications, 884 came from the United States, 303 from the Asia-Pacific region and just 40 from the UK.

Europe accounted for 675 applications in total, while 24 came from Latin American and the Caribbean and 17 were made from Africa.

Applications for top-level domains written in local languages totalled 116 and Icann CEO Rod Beckstrom said the shift to non-Latin alphabets would allow users to use the internet purely in their native script.